


The Undertow

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Daryl pov, Gen, Gen - but can be read with slash goggles on., Rick love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 11:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1467073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stick with me, little brother, just follow my lead - Merle Dixon</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Undertow

_Stick with me, little brother, just follow my lead.” – Merle Dixon_.

 

 

***

 

“Mechanic,” Zach said out of the blue one day. The statement was disingenuous enough that Daryl had looked over his own shoulder, perplexed.

“We need one?”

“No, it’s what you did – you were a mechanic - before the turn.”

“Yeah,” Daryl had responded, warily. “That’s completely wrong.”

“Oh.” Zach had shrugged, nonplussed. Everything came easily to that boy, Daryl noted, an easy charm, easy temperament, an easy smile that melted Beth’s clothes right off. “No matter.  I’ll guess it tomorrow, then.”

Once a day for six weeks Daryl had listened, bemused, as Zach rotated through forty-two different career options, some in jest – _c’mon man, rodeo clown!_ – others in earnest – _you can track animals and shit, so I’m guessing Parks and Wildlife?_    It revealed more about Zach than it shone a light on Daryl’s supposed past, and Daryl’s self-aware enough (dimly) to admit he enjoyed it – seeing a distorted glimpse of himself through someone else’s eyes. Mechanic, rodeo clown, wild-land fireman, in every case Daryl’s response was gruff disdain with the occasional swipe across Zach’s ears when the boy got too cheeky for his own good, until Zach said, seriously, “Homicide Detective,” on the last day of his life, and Daryl had paused, drew in a breath and answered aloud, “Actually, you’re right.” It was so far off the mark as to be laughable – hence Michonne sniggering in the background, too cool for school and with instincts that terrified half the crew – and even as Michonne shook her head in disbelief Daryl said _yes_. Forty-two possible careers and ‘cop’ made Daryl want to…react… somehow. It’s what _Rick_ used to do, and Daryl’s so much a part of Rick Grimes that the answer is instinctive, one of the easiest lies he’s ever spoken. He’s embedded in Rick - spinal column, arms, legs - Daryl’s hyper-aware of every movement Rick telegraphs, he feels like an extension of violence waiting to happen, and it’s that sense of belonging that makes it easy for Daryl to imagine – if only for a moment – some ghostly parallel where he always stood at Rick’s side. “Yeah, cop, undercover,” he elaborates, and watches Zach flicker from elation to suspicion, because there ain’t nobody on this good earth who would believe that set of circumstances.

All of this guessing what people once did is a waste of time and energy, Daryl reasons, it doesn’t make a lick of difference to the here and now. No one has called Rick ‘Sherriff’, ‘Deputy’, or ‘cop’ in years – no one’s called Daryl a ‘redneck’ in just as long. They’re not applicable anymore.

Those terms lost their meaning, were written over by the jungle of survival - what happened in the past stays in the past, and personally, Daryl’s happier because of it. He’s comfortable at Rick’s side – back when this mess first started, after the crew came back from Atlanta to find Walker’s chomping down on their group – on the morning when they were clearing out the bodies, the first concern Daryl voiced, unrelated to Merle, was the question of leadership. _Who’s in charge?_ Shane, Rick, and himself were standing as a tripod, and Daryl had flicked his gaze between the two cops uneasily, on his toes and ready to leap in any direction. Daryl only settled into the group dynamic when the question of leadership was resolved – Shane and Rick duking it out for almost a year - and Daryl’s never regretted his decision to stay put once he knew it was over. He’s never questioned the implicit trust he places in Rick Grimes. Not when Rick guided them through a winter that was hell-bent on killing them, not when Rick designed the plan that gave them the prison, the longest stretch of shelter they ever had – and not when Rick unbuckled his belt and laid it aside, his face gaunt and tired.

“I want you on the council,” Rick had declared one day.

“The hell.”

Rick had curled his fingers around Daryl’s forearm, tethering him in place before Daryl could get his speed up and bolt. Rick’s expression had twisted, bottom lip caught between his teeth, face rough with a week’s growth of fuzz and zero sleep. “I’m going to step down – for myself, for Carl – I need to catch my breath, you understand?”

“Course,” Daryl had assured. “You earned it, man, there ain’t nobody who will say different.”

“Yeah.” Rick stretched the word out until it was long as a highway, pitted with holes you couldn’t see. “Maybe. I’m not telling you what to do, Daryl, you don’t need that, but I am _asking_. I trust your judgement.”

“On the council,” Daryl reiterated, because he felt it needed clarifying.

“Yep, on the council.”

Even with Carol, Hershel, and Glenn, who Daryl knew and trusted, even with Sasha who he didn’t know at all but was willing to listen too, Daryl _hated_ that position, he hated the drop in his stomach every time they said their individual pieces and fixed their attention on Daryl. He came away from those weekly sessions with ants in his pants, keyed up and hungering for a fight, and he’d find his way to Rick before too long, as he always did. He’d come across the man hoeing the garden bed or tending to the pigs, and fairly vomit information. If Daryl were asked, he’d say he was clearing his head because what did he know about the minutia of daily life, the small details that made up a community – heck, community life is what Rick once _specialised_ in – if Merle were still here, he’d smile crudely and say Daryl was fishing for Rick’s opinion, trying to get a bead on what was expected of him. Rick mostly listened, head tilted, one hundred per cent focused on whatever Daryl was venting about, maintaining eye-contact and reciting easily “It’s not up to me,” until Daryl wanted to hit him. Repeatedly.

“You enjoy digging about for worms?”

Rick’s not easy to rile up, not until the moment he’s actually riled up, then people regret the transition fast. Daryl knows him, he feels like his known Rick Grimes for an entire lifetime, he knows Rick’s dark places - the shallow reefs of grief and anger - the solid ocean bed of  _courage_ \- he’s intimate with the scuttled ships, the sunken skeletons that litter Rick’s past; he knows the treasure, the worth, of the man. Rick doesn’t get riled up at Daryl’s pointed tone, he squints upward from his crouched position, one knee in the dirt with a smile tugging at his mouth. “I’d say it’s good for me...the time spent here.” _Good for you, too_ , Daryl hears, unspoken, _the time you spend with the council._ Paradoxically, Rick Grimes is the most dangerous, and safest, person Daryl has ever encountered.

“If this is some after school special,” he growls. “I’m gonna tan your hide.”

“I just planted this garden,” Rick protested. “Find some other way to torment me.”

“Hunting,” Daryl insisted. “When I get chewed up out there, you’re gonna need the skill-set when I’m dead.”

It was an honest fact as far as Daryl’s concerned, he's surprised to have lasted so long as it is, and if Rick’s expression darkened at the words then Daryl didn’t comment on it. He’s been teaching Rick how to track, how to hunt, since the winter on the road; at first because separating Rick and Lori was the only way anyone in the group got relief from the smothering silence that lay between them, and secondly, because it was practical. Teaching each other what skill-sets they possessed was common practice after that, and giving Rick time to breathe without a dozen eyes fixed on him in expectation didn’t hurt none either.

Hunting, Daryl insisted, and hoped he didn’t sound too eager, too desperate to reclaim some of Rick’s time.

Rick is a good scout, and Daryl has the feeling he was the type of man who picked things up with relative ease, quick to study, quicker to learn, truth is, he’s the type of man Daryl would have resented in civilian life; they never would have been friends had they met. Truth is, Zach’s guess of ‘cop’ is as ludicrous as Michonne finds it, and even with that pearl of knowledge clutched close to his chest, founded by salt, moulded by bivalves, Daryl still opts for the delusion, for the trick. _Yeah, you’re right, cop_.  I could have been Rick’s partner in another life, he means, and a damn sight better at it than Shane.

Giving Daryl the opportunity to speak his own voice -  to be heard in the council - to be something other than violence waiting to happen, an extension of Rick’s will, was the way Rick Grimes led, unassuming, unacknowledged, and instinctive as the man breathed. Daryl wouldn’t give Rick up, he wouldn’t turn his back, or let the man bleed out, he couldn’t watch him die.

“I ain’t afraid of nuthin’,” he shouts at Beth. Like most of the Dixon clan, the louder Daryl speaks the bigger the lie he’s telling, sometimes they’re doozy’s, (telling tall-tales at a bar, three sheets to the wind with Merle at his side) sometimes their layered in teasing humour (Zach), sometimes they’re yelled as a full-on threat – _You going to make this about my daddy or some shit?_ (Carol) – sometimes they’re so big, so overwhelming; they’re trying to fill the black-hole star of his heart, the gravitational pull of violence.

There are other people’s perceptions at work - other people’s truths - the way Zach could look at him and see ‘cop’ as a possibility. There’s the way Daryl presents himself to the world, one side of the bivalve - blunt, tough, honest, the meanest, hardest, son of a bitch you’ll ever meet - then there’s the truth Daryl knows for himself, hidden under layers and never acknowledged. The truth Merle knew, that Joe sensed, that Rick’s never abused.

 _I don’t need anybody,_ Daryl snarled.   _I ain't afraid of nuthin'_.

He’s never been alone in his entire life, not really, not in the way that counts. He grew up in a family of four where shouting was the only way to make yourself heard, and when his mom burnt to death, there were no checks and balances left, only their dad’s vicious anger and the belts, the broken bottles, he took to their flesh. Merle left – Merle said if he stayed any longer he would have killed their old man, he took off at seventeen, unafraid to be alone, when Daryl was only eleven – and his family unit of four tumbled to two. Daryl didn’t leave, he stuck with it, dragged his old man home when he was drunk, learnt at a tender age how to be hyper-vigilant, one eye fixed on the most dangerous man in the room, ready to take his cues from the slightest provocation. Daryl stayed in that environment until Merle came back six years later, then he left with his older brother, felt the comforting weight of Merle’s arm slung around his shoulders.  

 _Toughed that shit out,_ he could argue.

The silent part of him looks toward Carol, feels a kinship with her that he can’t name, because she too, never left the violence and when people look at her – toughed that shit out – isn’t part of the lexicon. Daryl drifts along, unmoored, from his old man to Merle, Merle to Rick, and Rick to Joe, caught in their eddies and flows.

“I ain’t afraid of nuthin’” he shouts at Beth, and she looks right through him, calm as a harbour in a howling storm. He isn’t afraid of being bitten – Daryl's known he's going to die for some time, ever since a junkie put a gun to his head – Daryl isn’t terrified of Walkers, their rotten flesh, shambling bodies, misshapen limbs; he’s not afraid of being hit, being hurt, being asked to kill. He’ll do it all without blinking.

“You’re gonna be the last man standing,” Beth says and she  _smiles_.

Offering his own life for Rick is no big thing.  Daryl doesn’t even think about it, it’s a relief, to direct Joe’s anger elsewhere, to give them a fighting chance, however slim, to know if Rick goes down then Daryl won’t be there to _witness_ it. Least of his concerns. A selfless act, he could argue, giving my life for theirs, he could die content like that.

Too scared to be left alone, he could parrot right back, and that offer, standing still while they _beat you to death_ , most selfish thing you ever done, great plan moron.

“Hey, you were _alone_ ,” Rick soothes, and he knows Daryl intimately, hushing the confession before Daryl can be mired in his own guilt.  

Sometimes Rick knows him better than he knows himself. The words are caught in his throat, shame, fierce loyalty, the underlying riptide of Daryl’s emotions pulling him under, because alone is the only thing that terrifies him.  Merle wasn't afraid to be alone, not even when they were kids, he left in the middle of the night without a word to anyone. Daryl's worshipped two men in his entire life, one is dead, the other sits at his side, and Rick doesn't use the knowledge of weakness to gouge out a wound or scold.  His presence is a steady balm.  “You’re my brother,” Rick insists, trying to comfort, putting the needs of others first, when Daryl came to sit beside Rick to make sure it was  _Rick_ who was okay. Rick nods, barely perceptible, waiting for that moment when Daryl trusts him - _I need you_ \- and Rick's braver, more honest, than Daryl can ever let himself be, he says those words fearlessly.

I wanted to die before you did, Daryl could say, and maybe that's cowardly, because Rick was forced to save them, savage in his need, desperate to keep his people safe no matter the cost.

I don’t want to live without you, Daryl could say, and he knows he'd follow Rick to the bitter end, do whatever was asked, kill whoever was necessary. But maybe those two truths are already combined, the different shades of context wrapped tight around one another, pearl gold and ocean black, cowardly or vicious tough, and every shade between.


End file.
